When they reached the house it was seven o'clock. The house was cold, for the coolies had let the fires die down, and when Mrs. Jackson fussed about, spurring the boys to activity, she saw that dinner had not even been started. "What is the matter with these boys!" Mrs. Jackson complained, but she knew what was the matter. There was no word from Doctor Strike. Megan went to her room and sat down with a book. She was quite aware that she was becoming overcharged; her hands trembled noticeably as she turned the leaves, and with an instinct for preserving her balance she tried to take her mind as far as possible from China by reading a book that had nothing to do with it. But she could not. She remained abnormally alert to all she had just seen. Finally she left the book open on her lap and deliberately abandoned herself to the barbaric images that filled her mind, letting them riot through as they must, hoping when they had had their will for the power to discipline them into some permanent understanding of them. What she most clearly saw were the young Chinese soldiers tossed like discarded bundles on the road, yet lying in dignity for all that. Only man among animals, she thought, even among those most noble, has any dignity in death; the rest become at once carrion. But Megan had never in her hospital, nor again here, looked at a man just dead without feeling that that which had just left him had been in its essence truly august. The young Chinese soldiers were past help from her, but there remained all of China and it could not be possible that having reached China she should find herself thwarted as at home. That almost desperate irritation which she felt before obstacles began to take hold of her. She dropped her book and walked over to her window, open now on darkness and rain and a few casual lights. She thought of Miss Reed at the beleaguered orphanage in the midst of Chapei. Miss Reed's ultimate desire, she was convinced, was for martyrdom, and apparently she was about to attain it. A desire so capable of definite realization was, she felt sure, rare. Miss Reed was fortunate. And it came to her with a further irritation how much her own desires still floated unharnessed and goalless, waiting amid a confusion as of voices, beating of wings, sharp flashes, for something they could take hold of and make their own. Mrs. Jackson called her from below and she ran down-stairs in great haste because haste gave an illusion of direction. But she found it difficult to eat, and Mr. Jackson also sat making scraping sounds with his fork, eating nothing. His face was flushed and his eyes were heavy. Mrs. Jackson, after watching him anxiously during the meal, leaned over and felt his forehead. "Will," she exclaimed, "you have a fever!" She jumped up and ran to the foot of the stairs, calling her amah to bring down the thermometer. Mr. Jackson looked apologetically at Megan.